A multiple use ticket generating method is disclosed which enables a recipient to obtain signatures for arbitrarily many (correctly formed) messages after only one interaction with the signer. The method provides a blind signature in a ticket, the signature having a multiple use with a built-in expiration....http://www.google.com/patents/US7162639?utm_source=gb-gplus-sharePatent US7162639 - Method for generating many-time restrictive blind signatures

A multiple use ticket generating method is disclosed which enables a recipient to obtain signatures for arbitrarily many (correctly formed) messages after only one interaction with the signer. The method provides a blind signature in a ticket, the signature having a multiple use with a built-in expiration. Then, the method develops a blinding value for the signature in a reproducible computation using a seed key substantially known only to the issuer of the ticket. The method implements a new class of signature schemes almost as efficiently as do previous one-time restrictive blind signature methods.

Images(2)

Claims(9)

1. A multiple use ticket method, comprising:

providing a blind signature in a ticket, the signature having a multiple use; and

developing a blinding value for the signature in a reproducible computation using a seed key known to the issuer of the ticket, wherein said signature does not require an interactive signing protocol.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein said ticket is an electronic personal ticket.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein said ticket is an electronic season ticket.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein said ticket is an untraceable electronic personal ticket.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein said ticket is a personal license.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein said ticket is a personal driver's license.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein said ticket is an offline personal ticket.

8. A system for generating a multiple use ticket, comprising:

means for providing a blind signature in a ticket, the signature having a multiple use; and

means for developing a blinding value for the signature in a reproducible computation using a seed key known to the issuer of the ticket, wherein said signature does not require an interactive signing protocol.

9. An article of manufacture for a computer system, for providing a multiple use ticket, comprising:

a computer readable medium;

computer code in said computer readable medium for providing a blind signature in a ticket, the signature having a multiple use; and

computer code in said computer readable medium for providing a blinding value for the signature in a reproducible computation using a seed key known to the issuer of the ticket, wherein said signature does not require an interactive signing protocol.

The invention disclosed broadly relates to cryptography and more particularly relates to digital signature methods.

In contrast to conventional digital signature schemes, blind signature schemes allow the recipient to obtain signatures for messages that the signer does not learn. If the recipient can get only one signed message from each execution of the signing operation by the signer, then the blind signature scheme is called one-time, otherwise it is called many-time. Many-time blind signatures have been used to build untraceable tickets, called credentials. Such tickets can be issued by one organization and verified by another. Each customer uses different pseudonyms with each organization and a ticket is simply a blind signature for a customer pseudonym. The blinding property allows one to use different pseudonyms for issuing and showing a ticket. Even if all organizations collude, they cannot trace which tickets belong to which customers. One-time blind signatures have been used to build practical offline and online untraceable electronic cash schemes, where the issuing organizations are banks, the recipients are merchants and the tickets can be used only once. Most electronic cash schemes based on blind signatures use the one-time form, mainly to avoid the problem of multiple copies of the same electronic coin.

For offline untraceable electronic cash, double spending of coins should be detectable after the fact, so that double spenders are identifiable if and only if they use a coin more than once. This problem has been addressed by using restrictive one-time blind signatures. The customer's identity is embedded into her pseudonyms in such a way that it is revealed if and only if she double spends. A general blind signature scheme would allow a customer to also obtain coins for pseudonyms of other customers or for pseudonyms that are not assigned to anyone. In contrast, restrictive blind signature schemes guarantee that customers form their pseudonyms in a way that preserves the customer's identity, which the signer has encoded into each issued pseudonym.

A related application area is untraceable membership cards, which can be stored in palmtops, smartcards, etc. Owners may use their membership cards online or offline, arbitrarily often, and in an untraceable way, i.e., several uses of the same card cannot be linked by the respective verifiers. However, issuers of membership cards require that membership cards can be used only by their owners, not by other individuals, even if the owners wish to lend their membership cards away. Purely cryptographic solutions to this problem cannot exist because whether a membership card is actually used by its owner or someone else, is not distinguishable by cryptographic means. It has been suggested to use a wallet-with-observer architecture, where every user has a personal device (wallet) that is in part controlled by an implanted tamper resistant security module (observer). The observers can be equipped with a biometric sensor which is a sufficiently powerful hardware basis for the problem at hand. The prior art relies heavily on the tamper resistance of observers, because if an attacker breaks his observer he can not only lend his own membership cards to other individuals, but he can also forge new membership cards. Another approach relies on the tamper resistance of only observers with respect to transferability of membership cards. Attackers who break their observers can at most pool all the membership cards they already have, but cannot produce new ones. The approach includes a “cascade” signature scheme which has not been implemented.

What is needed in the prior art is a restrictive blind signature scheme that allows a recipient to obtain signatures for arbitrarily many (correctly formed) messages after only one interaction with the signer.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

A multiple use ticket generating method is disclosed which enables a recipient to obtain signatures for arbitrarily many (correctly formed) messages after only one interaction with the signer. The method provides a blind signature in a ticket, the signature having a multiple use with a built-in expiration. Then, the method develops a blinding value for the signature in a reproducible computation using a seed key substantially known only to the issuer of the ticket. The method implements a new class of man-time restrictive blind signature schemes almost as efficiently as do previous one-time restrictive blind signature methods.

The resulting ticket can be in the form of an electronic personal ticket, such as a season ticket for sporting events. Other forms for the ticket can include a personal license, such as a personal driver's license. The ticket has the property of being untraceable and has the advantage that the signature does not require an interactive signing protocol.

DESCRIPTION OF THE FIGURES

FIG. 1 shows a method for producing a signature.

FIG. 2 shows a method for transforming a signature.

DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS

An efficient implementation of a many-time restrictive blind signature scheme is disclosed. It uses no hash function, is about as efficient as previous one-time restrictive blind signature methods, and its security rests on a similar assumption as that of the ElGamal signature scheme. Applications for the new signature scheme are untraceable offline personal tickets, e.g., monthly season tickets, driver's licenses, or coupons that can be used multiple times until they expire. A computer system for carrying out the method of the invention is a standard general purpose data processor that includes a random access memory to store the program embodiment of the invention and a central processor to execute the instructions in the program embodiment. The computer system is connected to a network to generate and circulate untraceable tickets, licenses, or coupons that can be used multiple times until they expire.

Definitions

A definition follows of many-time restrictive blind signatures. The formalization of restrictiveness follows ideas of Brands [B93], Franklin and Yung [FY93] and Pfitzmann and Sadeghi [PS99].

Definition 1 (Many-time restrictive blind signature).

A many-time restrictive blind signature scheme consists of a security parameter kεIN, a signing key space X, a verifying key space Y, a message space M, a signature space Σ, a blinder space Ω, a witness space W, and a relation make ⊂M×W. Also included is an equivalence relation on W (equivalent witnesses v, wεW are denoted v≡w), more precisely, there are families of all these domains indexed by the security parameter k. If (w, m)ε make then we say that witness w makes message m. At system setup time, a particular security parameter is chosen and from then on, only one instance of each domain is used. Also included are two probabilistic protocol algorithms gen, sign, a probabilistic protocol trans of two participants Bob and Verifier, and a deterministic algorithm verify, which are declared as follows:

(x,y)←gen(k)σ←sign(x,m)(m',σ')←trans(y,m,σ,w)acc←verify(y,m,σ).

All of them are efficiently computable. Given a security parameter k, the key generating algorithm gen returns a pair of a private signing key xεX and a public verification key yεY. The algorithm sign takes as input a signing key xεX and a message mεM. It returns a signature σεΣ. The protocol trans takes as input for both Bob and the Verifier a verification key y, and only for Bob a message m, a signature σ and a blinder ω. After the protocol, both Bob and the Verifier return the same message m′ and signature σ′. The algorithm verify takes as input a public key y, a message mεM and a signature σεΣ and returns a Boolean value acc. If verify (y, m, σ) returns True then the signature σ is called valid for m with respect to public key y, or the pair (m, σ) is valid for y.

EFFECTIVENESS: For every security parameter k, every key pair (x, y)←gen(k), and every message mεM the algorithm sign (x, m) produces a valid signature σ for m. For all inputs as above, every blinder ωεΩ and every signature σεΣ valid for m the algorithm trans (y, m, σ, ω) returns a valid signature σ′ for m′.

RESTRICTIVENESS with respect to make and ≡: Every polynomial-time attacker who (i) obtains valid signatures σi (i=0 . . . n) from the signer for respective messages mi of his (adaptive) choice. The choice of each message he asks to be signed may depend on all messages previously chosen and the corresponding responses by the signer. The attacker also (ii) comes up with a new message m′ and signature σ′ and (iii) delivers n+1 witnesses ω1, ω2, . . . , ωn, ω′ has only a negligible chance of achieving the following event: The signature σ′ is valid for m′, the witnesses ωi, ω′ each match their messages mi, m′ and the witness ω′ is not equivalent to any of the witnesses ωi if any.

UNLINKABILITY: Let (m, σ), (m′, σ′) be two pairs valid with respect to y. Then for each internal choice rV of the Verifier in trans, there is a unique blinder ωεΩ and a unique internal choice, (i.e., a sequence of random bits used by a probabilistic algorithm) rB for Bob in algorithm trans, such that the execution of trans (y, m, σ, ω) with internal choices rB, rV returns (m′, σ′).

Note that previous one-time blind signature schemes use an interactive signing protocol from which the recipient gets a message and signature that he can later show to a verifier without interaction. Many-time blind signature schemes use a non-interactive signing protocol from which the recipient gets a message and signature that he can later transform and thereby show to many verifiers.

3 The Rust Signature Scheme

The proposed many-time blind signature scheme is referred to herien as “RUST”. The standard discrete log setting is adopted. Let p be a large prime, q be a large prime divisor of p−1. Typically, p and q will be chosen about 1024 bit and 160 bit long, respectively [O99]. Then Zp* has a unique subgroup Gq of order q and since Zp* is cyclic, so is Gq. Let g, g1 be generators of Gq that are chosen uniformly at random.

The private and public key spaces are ZZq and Gq, respectively. The message space is M=Gq*\{1}, where Gq* is Gq except all members that disappear modulo q. The signature space is Σ=Gq*×ZZq×ZZq*, the space of blinders is Ω=ZZq*, the witness space is W=ZZq, the making relation is
make={(m,ω)εM×W|m=g1ω mod p}

and any two witnesses are equivalent, i.e., ∀v, wεW: v≡w. Key generation is by choosing a signing key xεXuniformly at random and computing the corresponding verification key y=gx mod p.

A signature(r, s, t)εΣ(thus the name of the scheme) is valid for message mεM with respect to public key y if the following equation holds:
verify(y,m,σ)=gr+s=ym+tmmsrrt mod p. (1)
A pair (m, σ) is called terminated if t=−m mod q, otherwise it is called fresh.
3.1 Producing Signatures

Let the generator g, and a key pair (x, y) be setup as above. A signature for a given message mεM is constructed as shown in FIG. 1:

One chooses a, bεRZZq uniformly at random such that a+bm≠−1(mod q) in step (1) and computes the signature component r in step (2). If any of the values r, r−mx or (a+bm) rmx disappears modulo q, then the execution needs to be repeated from step (1). In step (3), the remaining signature values s, t are computed.

3.2 Transforming Signatures

Given a verification key y and a blinder ωεΩ, a fresh pair (m, (r, s, t))εM×Σ of a message and a signature is transformed into another pair (m′, (r′, s′, t′)). The blinder ω is required such that mω mod p ≠0 (mod q) (see FIG. 2): In step (1) through (5) Bob forms the new message m′ and the signature component r′=marbgcyd such that:

1. the exponents

b=rtm+tdandc=aωm'+dms-ω(r+s)m'ω(m+t)m'-1m'
are functions of a and d,
2. the Verifier does not learn any information about Bob's input m, (r, s, t),
3. even if Bob deviated from the protocol, he could not end up with some r′ for which he has a representation with respect to m, r, g only, i.e., d=0.

In detail, Bob chooses uniformly at random an auxiliary value αεRZZq, and the Verifier chooses dεRZZq (step (1)). Then Bob computes the output message m′=mω mod p in step (2). Bob further computes the auxiliary values (β, γ) and the preliminary signature component r* in step (3). After sending m′, r* to the Verifier, he obtains in return the Verifier's choice d in order to compute the signature component r′ in step (5). So does the Verifier. Only in the case if d or r′ disappears modulo q must the protocol be repeated from step (1). Next, Bob computes the exponents a, b according to step (6) and the signature components s′, t′ according to step (7). He finally sends the signature components s′, t′ to the Verifier. FIG. 2 illustrates transforming a signature.

Remark 2. The RUST signature scheme ensures that signers always produce fresh pairs of messages and signatures and that only fresh pairs can be transformed. Note that if t=−m mod q some quotients in trans were undefined. However, transformed pairs are always terminated, so that a Verifier cannot transform a pair further. This feature of RUST is not implied by restrictiveness (Definition 1).

The protocol trans can be made non-interactive if one is willing to rely on the obscurity of some hash function H as in the standard Fiat-Shamir technique [FS87]: Instead of sending m′, r* after step (3) and obtaining the Verifiers choice d in return, Bob can compute d=H(y, m′, r*) after step (3) by himself. After step (7), Bob then sends m′, r*, s′, t′ to the Verifier. Finally, the Verifier checks in addition to the verification equation (1) whether r′=(r*y)H(y, m′, r*)g−1/m′.

The witness equivalence used for the RUST signature scheme is degenerate in the sense that any two witnesses are equivalent. This is no weakness of the RUST signature scheme, but allows producing and transforming signatures quite efficiently. Note that Brands suggests to use his one-time restrictive blind signature scheme for off line e-cash [B93] with the same degenerate witness equivalence (and function make). In offline e-cash, the price for the increased performance is computational instead of unconditional non-frameability. For many-time restrictive blind signatures, like the RUST scheme, signer identification by (more than one) signatures is no issue, and thus framing of signers is no issue either.

4. Main Result

In order to analyze the security of a proposed many-time restrictive blind signature scheme, referr to here as RUST, one needs the following two assumptions. These assumptions are not among the intensely investigated complexity theoretic assumptions like the discrete logarithm assumption [MOV97]. Nevertheless, they also underlie for example the ElGamal signature scheme and its derivatives without having been made explicit in previous work.

Assumption 1.

For some natural number nεIN, let gi(iε[1, n]) be generators of Gq, and define the function

and finally compute the signature components s′, t′.
Without loss of generality, the attacker can be assumed to pick the generators h1, . . . , hn such that he cannot feasibly find a representation of 1 with respect to h1, . . . , hn in Gq. Otherwise, he could represent at least one of the generators with respect to the others, and thus he could pick a proper subset of {h1, . . . , hn} in the first step above, adapt the following steps accordingly and end up with the same result (m′, (r′, s′, t′)).

A similar assumption has been used to reason about the security of ElGamal signatures [EG85], but those assumptions were left implicit.

Effectiveness of sign: Under Assumption A1, the probability to make a choice a, bεZZq such that any of the values r, r−mx or Ddef(a+bm)r+mx disappears modulo q is negligible and so is the probability to repeat step (2) of algorithm sign. In order to verify algorithm sign (see FIG. 1), insert its output into the right hand side of verification equation (1):

ym+tmmsrrt=gx(m+t)mms(magb)rt=gx(m+mr-mxD)mamrD(mx-r)mamrD(r-mx)gbmrD(r-mx)=gmxD((a+bm)r+mx+r-mx)gbmrD(r-mx)=gmrxD(a+bm+1)+mrD(br-bmx)=gmrD(ax+x+br)=grD(ar+amx+mx+bmr-ar)=grD(D+amx-ar)=gr+arD(mx-r)=gr+s(modp).
The signer produces fresh signatures because he chooses

t=mr-mx(a+bm)r+mx≠m(-1)=-m(modq)
according to the condition a≠bm+1 mod q in step (1) of FIG. 1. The signature components r and t do not disappear modulo q because of the loop condition in step (2).

Effectiveness of trans: The following verification is prepared by expressing Bob's signature components r′ and s′ in terms of Bobs input and his internal choices α, d and by using the definitions of β and γ according to step (3) of FIG. 2:

r'=(r*y)dg-1m'=(mαrβgγy)dg-1m'=mαdrrtm+rdgms-ω(r+s)m'ω(m+1)m'd-αdωm'-1m'yd(2)s'=art-bmsωrtr'=r'ωrt(αdrt-rtm+tdms)=dr'ω(α-msm+t).(3)
Under Assumption A1, the probability of choosing aεZZq, dεZZq* such that r′=0 mod q is negligible, and so is the probability of repeating after step (5). Next, insert the output m′, (r′, s′, t′) of algorithm trans into the verification equation (1) and by inserting the expressions for m′=mω and r′ according to equation (2):

ym'+t'm'm's'=mωm'art-bmsωrt(mαdrrtm+tdgms-ω(r+s)m'ω(m+t)m'd-αdωm'-1m'yd)-r'm'=mωm'r'ω(αd-dmsm+t)(mαdrrtm+tdg-ω(r+s)m'ω(m+t)m'dyd)-m'r'g((msω(m+t)m'd-αdωm'-1m')(-m'r')=m(αd-dmsm+y)m'r'(mαdrrtm+tdgr+sm+tdyd)-m'r'g(αdω-dmsω(m+1)+I)r'=(mmsrrtg-(r+s)ym+t)︸=1-dm'r'm+tgr'+dr'ω(α-msm+t)=gr'+s''(modp).
For the final rewriting use the expression (3) for s′. According to step (7) of FIG. 2, Bob produces terminated pairs because t′=−m′. This guarantees t′≠0 mod q because m′ is presumed not to disappear modulo q. The signature component r′ does not disappear modulo q because of the loop condition in step (5).

Restrictiveness: First consider private key related attacks. Consider a polynomial-time attacker who has obtained nεIN valid pairs (mi, (ri, si, ti)) of messages and signatures for i=1, . . . , n from the signer. The signer has chosen ri=miaigibi mod p, and has computed the signature components si, ti according to FIG. 1. The signature components ri release no information about the choices ai, bi to a polynomial-time attacker, so we need to look only at si and ti. According to FIG. 1,

si=airimiti,
which reveals the signer's choices ai. From the ti, the attacker learns the following system (4) of n linear equations over ZZq in n+1 variables, namely bi, x for i=1, . . . , n:
mi(ri−mix)=ti(airi+bimiri+mix)

bimiriti+mix(ti+mi)=miri−airiti. (4)
The values x and bi are undetermined because ti, mi≠0, and therefore valid signatures release no more information about x=loggy to a polynomial-time attacker, than y itself.

Next, show that an attacker who has not received any valid RUST signature with respect to a public key y cannot feasibly fabricate a valid signature for any message on his own (Case 0). An attacker who has got valid signatures for one or more messages mi is considered afterwards (Case 1).

Case 0: By contradiction to restrictiveness (Definition 1), assume an attacker who has no valid pairs of messages and signatures in the first place (n=0 in Definition 1), but succeeds to come up with a message m for which he has a witness ωεΩ that makes m, i.e., m=g1w and a valid signature σ. (For lack of input pairs to trans, plain identifiers are used for the outputs, i.e., no primes.) According to Assumption A2, the attacker uses 3 parameters a, c, dεZZq in order to build the signature component:
r=ma′gc′yd′ mod p

Because m must be chosen to be g1w, the only elements of Gq an attacker might use successfully to build r are those occurring in the verification equation (1), namely m, g, y. Would he use any other independently chosen element hεGq and succeed to find a valid signature, then the verification equation would reveal a representation of h with respect to m, g, y, which contradicts the discrete logarithm assumption.

Inserting the expression for r into the verification equation (1) yields:
gr+s=ym+tmmsrrt=ym+tmms(ma′gc′yd′)rt=ym+tg1ωms(g1ωa′gc′yd′)rt,
which can be rewritten as:
gr+s−c′rt=ym+t+d′rtg1ω(ns+a′rt).

Since the bases g, y and g1 are chosen independently, the only feasible way for the attacker to solve (5) is by letting the exponents of g, y and g1 disappear.

This leads to the following linear system (6) of 3 equations in 2 variables s and t, over ZZq:
ωms+ωa′rt=0−s+c′rt=r+(d′r+1)t=−m (6)

This system can be solvable only if the corresponding 3×3 determinant disappears:

|ωmωa'r0-1c'rr0d'r+1-m|=((1+a'+c'm)+d'r)ωmr=0(7)

Since neither ω nor m nor r may disappear modulo q, this condition (7) can be met only if (1+a′+c′m)+d′r 32 0. Here, the factors m and r are determined only after (o respective a′, c′, d′ have been chosen, and by Assumption A1, neither m nor r can be predicted or coerced to any particular value. Hence the only way to let the determinant (7) disappear is to let 1+a′+c′m=d′=0 (mod q). However, protocol trans ensures with overwhelming probability that a dishonest Bob ends up with a representation of r whose exponent d′ of y is not disappearing regardless of how Bob chooses r*. Note that Bob must provide r* before the Verifier sends his d and forms the signature component r=(r*y)dg−1/m in step (5).

Case 1: Due to the degenerate equivalence≡of witnesses, i.e., any two witnesses are equivalent, restrictiveness is satisfied whenever the attacker has obtained at least one valid pair (m, σ) and comes up with a new pair (m′, σ′) and a witness making m′. Restrictiveness requires no more, and thus nothing needs to be shown.

Blindness: Show that for each fresh valid pair (m, σ), where t≠−m(mod q), and each terminated valid pair (m′, σ′), where t′=−m′ (mod q), of messages and RUST signatures, and each choice dεZZq* of the verifier in trans, there is exactly one input ωεZZq* and one value αεZZq* such that trans maps (m, σ) to (m′, σ′). (Note that the value r* of the verifier's view on Bob in trans is a one-to-one map of the other elements d, m′, r′ of his view, and thus from an information theoretic viewpoint, it suffices to consider d, m′, σ′ as the verifier's view.) In the following, all steps refer to protocol trans in FIG. 2.

First show there is at most one pair (α, ω): It is immediate from step (2) that the blinder ω=logmm′ is uniquely determined. Furthermore, for each dεZZq* is obtained from steps (7), (6) and (3) in turn the following expression for s′:

s'=art-bmsωrtr'=αdrt-βdmsωrtr'=αrt-rtm+tmsωdrtr'(modq).

Since all r, t, d, r′, (m+t) are presumed not to disappear modulo q, the internal choice a of Bob is uniquely determined as follows:

α=ωs'dr'+msm+tmodq.

Next show that the uniquely determined pair (α, ω) from above transforms a fresh valid pair (m, σ) of message and signature into a terminated valid pair (m′, σ′). Since (m, σ)=(m, (r, s, t)) is presumed a fresh valid pair, we can rewrite the verification equation (1) for (m, (r, s, t)) as follows:
gr+s=pkm+tmmsrrt

rrt=gr+spk−(m+t)m−ms, where t≠−m (mod q) (9)
Furthermore, the unique a in equation (8) also determines a unique Υ in step (3), namely:

A restrictive blind signature scheme has been presented that allows a recipient to obtain signatures for arbitrarily many (correctly formed) messages after only one interaction with the signer. Signing, transforming and verifying costs two, six, and six full length modular exponentiations, respectively. For transforming and verifying, count the exponentiations of Bob and of the Verifier in trans, respectively. This compares to two, five and four modular exponentiations of the signer and recipient during the signing protocol and verification of the one-time restrictive blind signature protocol proposed by Chaum, Pedersen [CP92] and later by Brands [B93].

Various illustrative examples of the invention have been described in detail. In addition, however, many modifications and changes can be made to these examples without departing from the nature and spirit of the invention.